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Hamilton Street Gallery to present artists of Bound Brook

The seventh annual edition of the "Artists of Bound Brook" spotlights five individuals--including gallery proprietors Brian McCormack and Joan Sonnenfeld--who work in highly distinctive styles and media.

Each summer, Hamilton Street Gallery showcases select artists from its own Bound Brook neighborhood. The seventh annual edition of the "Artists of Bound Brook" spotlights five individuals — including gallery proprietors Brian McCormack and Joan Sonnenfeld — who work in highly distinctive styles and media.

The expanded possibilities opened up by the advent of digital photography inspired Bonner's exploration of the medium. A founding member of the Highland Park Artist Collective, Bonner photographed a visual history of Highland Park for its centennial celebrations, among other documentary series.

"My main project, begun in the year 2000, has been a photo documentation of a small section of the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park in Somerset," Bonner said. "It can be viewed at raritancanalphotos.org."

Bonner is no purist when it comes to photography — digital image manipulation is his specialty. His photo, "Raritan River Treescape with Geese," adorns the traffic control box at the corner of Amwell Road and East Mountain Road in Hillsborough as part of the Somerset County "Gallery 24/7" project.

"For the Hamilton Street Gallery exhibit, I chose five pieces from a series titled 'Bound Brook is Beautiful,'" Bonner said, "which includes photos displayed at the Bound Brook Library last year."

Clark innovated a unique upcycling for old pottery projects through her "found ceramic" constructions.

McCormack has grown increasingly adept at the processes of "painting with fire" or "pyro etching" — drawing by burning.

"I started using pyro etching when I inherited my father-in-law's wood carver burning tools," he explained. "It's still drawing with carbon, only more primitive."

McCormack burns images onto found furniture discards and scrap wood as an environmental statement. The piece titled "Saved" shows an old rocking chair, surviving and thriving in the midst of a conflagration.

The image and idea for the piece have a history dating back to McCormack's childhood in West Milford. His mother spotted an ornate rocker that their neighbor had set on a woodpile for burning, and asked if she could have it instead.

"I helped Mom take it home, and she stripped the ugly green paint off and restored it," McCormack recalled. "It's been in our family — and now at the gallery — ever since."